Sharia Laws

Manifesto of Liberation of Women in Iran
January 22 , 2010

Join International Coalition for Women's Rights
April 29, 2009

On April 19, 2009, the Somali parliament unanimously endorsed the introduction of Sharia law across the country.

A few days earlier, the imposition of Sharia law in Pakistan's northwestern Swat region was approved.

Last month, a sweeping law approved by the Afghan parliament and signed by President Hamid Karzai required Shi’a women to seek their husband's permission to leave home, and to submit to their sexual demands. Because of international and national protests the new law is now being reviewed but only to check its compatibility with Sharia law.

Sharia law deems a woman unequal and subordinate to her husband or male guardian. Under Sharia, women’s testimony is worth half that of men’s, women have limited rights to divorce and child custody and women can be executed for apostasy or stoned to death for adultery. It imposes sexual or gender apartheid and the veil and denies women rights, equality and freedom.

The imposition of Sharia law in the legal codes of Somalia, Pakistan and Afghanistan brings millions more under the yoke of political Islam.

Local and international pressure and opposition are the only ways to stop the rise of this regressive movement and defend women’s universal rights and secularism.

From Iran and Iraq to Britain and Canada, Sharia law is being opposed by a vast majority who choose 21st century universal values over medievalism. We, the undersigned, support this international struggle and call for:

• the abolition of discriminatory and Sharia laws
• an end to sexual apartheid
• secularism and the separation of religion from the state
• equality between women and men

ERN join One Law for All Campaign against Sharia Law in Britain
December 10, 2008

Equal Rights copposition to political Islam and Sharia law in Britain, but also Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan, and elsewhere, demand one secular law and full citizenship rights, demand an end to cultural relativism and racism, and defend universal rights.

Sharia law is discriminatory and unjust, particularly against women and children. Sharia courts in Britain are a quick and cheap route to injustice and do nothing to promote minority rights and social cohesion. Their voluntary nature is a sham as many women will be pressured into going to these courts and abiding by their decisions. Those who fail to make use of Sharia law or seek to opt out will be made to feel guilty and can be treated as apostates and outcasts.

You can sign the petition or find out more about this campaign by visiting its website.

Against the New “Family Bill” of the Islamic Republic of Iran
August 13, 2008

The “Family Bill” of the Islamic Republic of Iran has been postponed for review as a result of public outrage and pressure. Nonetheless, opposition to the Bill must be maintained until it is cancelled altogether.

This bill introduces new ultra-reactionary regulations in addition to all existing misogynist Islamic laws in order to deny women any rights and to push the society even further backwards. This bill openly wages a war against the Iranian society irrespective of gender. It is an extension of the war of this regime against human dignity, women’s rights, secularism, freedom and equality. This bill intensifies the organised violence against women and all members of society and further denies them their rights.

The misogynist and medieval laws and this bill should be strongly condemned. Equal Rights Now proposes the following alternative platform against the Family Bill of the Islamic Republic of Iran and calls upon all to support this alternative towards forming a widespread and strong struggle against the Islamic regime.

1. We alongside the people of Iran object to the totality of the Islamic Republic and its laws and regulations including the current Family Bill, the oppression of women in Iran, compulsory Islamic veiling, “siqeh” (temporary marriage), polygamy and sexual apartheid.

We believe that all the misogynist laws of the Islamic Republic should be abolished. Religion should be separate from the state and educational system and be relegated to the private sphere. We believe that the slightest improvement in the quality of lives of the people in Iran requires an unconditional struggle against the totality of the regime and depends on the overthrow of the Islamic Republic of Iran. We are against the essence of polygamy, irrespective of the consent or disapproval of the first wife. This is a law that belongs to the age of barbarism. We are against the totality of “siqeh”, Islamic prostitution, whether it is registered or unregistered. We are against any form of “mehriye” (dowry) or “shirbaha” (mother’s milk money) be it taxed or exempt of taxation. This reduced women to commodities and personifies the lack of rights for millions of people. We are against the state’s intervention in people’s private lives, be it in name of religion, or in name of institution of family, nation, honour, culture or tradition.

2. This alternative platform consists of personalities, activists, and forces that struggle against the Islamic Republic. We condemn any form of appeasement or collaboration in the name of defending women’s right or rejecting the Family Bill with the power centres, factions, and representatives of the regime, members of the Islamic Assembly, pressure groups organised around the Islamic Republic, its ayatollahs and clerics that appear as opponents or proponents of the Islamic Republic. Such an approach is deceitful; it is a particular political project which is in line with the competition of factions of the regime as the so-called elections approach. The struggle for women’s rights and against the Family Bill is not a platform for The Women’s Faction of the Islamic Parliament, Tahkim Vahdat faction, Mosharekat faction or those who gather around Khatami and/or Rafsanjani or the candidates of the sham elections. Any attempt to bridge the legitimate struggle of women and libertarian people and the Islamic Assembly and the factions of the regime will be exposed. The struggle for women’s right is not the scene of intra-government competition and conspiracy.

3. The Family Bill is openly against women’s rights and people’s civil rights; it is not reformable and should be done away with. We believe that no state has the right to intervene in people’s private lives. Forming or not forming a family, registering or not registering a marriage, adopting any form of private life should be done free from any intervention of state or religion and should be regarded as part of people’s civil rights. Our opposition to this bill is not being made in the name of protecting the institution of the family, in the name of national or cultural identity, or from the point of its supposed inconsistencies with Islam. We believe that both the Islamic institution of family and the national-traditional institution of family have been made on the basis of depriving women of their human rights. From our point of view women’s rights and human rights are the fundamentals of any law. For us the most sacred and the most important thing is providing people with libertarian and egalitarian rights. Any person, with or without a family, woman or man, calling herself an Iranian or not, single parent or not, married or unmarried should be provided with equal rights and human dignity in society. When it comes to women’s right within the family we believe in and demand the following:

1. Any couple above 16 has the right to choose a conjugal life. Any kind of pressure in order to choose a spouse, begin or terminate a marriage should be outlawed.

2. To acquire official status for conjugal relationships in order to be included within the scope of laws, which are related to familial matters, registration in governmental offices will be sufficient. Registration of marriage should not be given any religious status. No form of religious ceremony should be allowed in the official registration of marriage. Performing a particular form of religious or traditional marriage ceremony has no role in considering a marriage as official or unofficial.

3. Prohibition of any form of bargaining and monetary exchange in the marriage such as marriage-portion, “shirbaha,” dowry etc.

4. Prohibition of polygamy and siqeh (temporary marriages).

5.Absolute equal rights for women and men in the family such as deciding the place to live, child custody cases and matters related to child education, decision making concerning the belongings of the family and its economic affairs and whatever that is related to conjugal relationship. Man’s privileged position as the head of family should be abolished in all laws and regulations. The right to direct the family should be passed to women and men equally.

6. Women and men should have the unconditional right to divorce. After divorce, women and men have absolutely equal rights and duties regarding children.

7. Women and men have equal rights concerning the belongings that have been acquired or have been used by all the family during their conjugal relationship.

8. The automatic attribution of father’s family name to children should be abolished. Choosing the family name of the children should be left to the mutual consent between the mother and the father. If an agreement is not reached children will bear the mother’s family name. The father and mother’s names should be removed from official ID cards (such as driving license, national identification card, etc.).

9. The state should support single-parent families. The state should especially support divorced single mothers or those who have given birth to a child without marriage against material pressure and backward morality.

10. Any form of backward and reactionary laws that consider extramarital sexual relationships as an offence should be abolished.

11. Any person that has reached the age of sexual maturity has the irreversible right to freely participate in sexual relationships with other adults.

12. The age of sexual maturity for both women and men is 15. Sexually mature people (adults) do not have the right to have sexual relationship with those who have not arrived at the age of sexual maturity even though with consent; this is considered a criminal offence.

13. All sexually mature women and men have the right to decide about their sexual relationship with other sexually mature persons. A voluntary sexual relationship between adults is their private affair and no person or authority has the right to intervene or expose it.

14. All people, especially the youth, should be educated about sex, safe preventative methods, and methods of avoiding sexually transmitted diseases. Sexual education should become a part of curriculum of high schools. The state has the immediate duty to inform the widest public and promote people’s scientific consciousness about different aspects of sexual life and individual’s rights in sexual relationships through advertisements, forming mobile clinics and educational teams, special campaigns and TV and radio programmes or through any other effective way.

15. Contraceptives and means of preventing sexually transmitted diseases should be widely accessible free of charge.

To protest and object to the reactionary Family Bill of the Islamic Republic we call upon all activists of women and children’s rights, revolutionaries, libertarian and egalitarian organisations, political parties, and all the people to unite around this platform.